Can a Prenup Prevent Alimony in Florida?

1. Can a Prenup Waive Alimony in Florida?

Yes. Florida’s premarital agreement statute lists the subjects spouses may contract on, and one of them is the establishment, modification, waiver or elimination of spousal support. Florida appellate courts have enforced complete waivers. The Fifth District held in McNamara that a spouse may waive alimony of any type in an antenuptial or postnuptial agreement without offending public policy.

In Baker, a Pennsylvania couple in their sixties signed an agreement that waived all alimony. The wife had given up $55,000 a year of alimony from her first husband to marry, and her own lawyer changed one word in the agreement before she signed. The marriage lasted over nine years. The trial court found the waiver left the wife “a pauper and a potential ward of the State of Florida” and refused to apply it. The Fifth District reversed in 1993 and sent the case back for further proceedings under the agreement’s terms.

Two kinds of support sit outside any waiver, and section 3 takes them up. A waiver in a postnup is judged under a different test, covered on the postnuptial agreement page.

2. Does a Prenup Stop Alimony If It Only Says "No Alimony"?

A common question I hear is, “If we sign a prenup that says no alimony, can my spouse still ask a judge for it?” The answer depends on four details of the wording.

1. Name the forms of support. A clause covering “any form of alimony or spousal support” defeated a lump-sum award in Mackaravitz, where a trial judge tried to repay a wife for her premarital money.
2. Waive modification in words. In Snedaker the agreement waived “any and all rights to receive any further alimony, support or maintenance payments,” and the Fourth District held that clause was a valid waiver of any future right to modify. In Hahamovitch the same court held that a general waiver of alimony “except as otherwise provided” in the agreement was not specific enough to waive the wife’s right to seek modification of the alimony the agreement provided.
3. Cover alimony, not only property. A prenup that deals with property and says nothing about support leaves support open. Cladis enforced a wife’s waiver of her husband’s property and held she could still claim alimony. Holland reached the same result for a waiver of estate rights only.
4. Say “now existing or later created.” The Legislature changed the forms of alimony in 2023 and can again.

Each detail comes from an enforcement fight in which a trial judge wanted to award something and the appellate court held the spouses to their own words.

3. What Support Can a Prenup Not Waive?

Two kinds of alimony-related support survive a waiver, and child support is a third subject the agreement cannot reach.

Temporary support and temporary fees. In Belcher in 1972 the Florida Supreme Court held that a waiver of alimony, suit money and fees for the period before dissolution is “a factor to be considered but not the sole factor, nor conclusive.” In Lord the wife, 82, with a net worth of $3.9 million, owed the husband, 77, with $100,000, a $500,000 lump sum under an agreement signed two days before the wedding, and each side was to bear its own fees. The Fourth District affirmed an award of $17,500 in temporary fees to the husband, because the each-pays-own clause violated Florida’s long-standing policy against waiving pre-dissolution support. Khan in 2012 applied the same rule to a settlement agreement and said it draws no line between prenups and postnups.

The rule is not “never.” In Appelbaum the Fourth District enforced a fee waiver against a wife who had at least $500,000, whose own lawyer drafted the clause, and whose marriage lasted five years. The court weighed the agreement together with need and ability to pay, so I treat a fee waiver as a term to negotiate and not as a given.

Support that keeps a spouse off public assistance. For a premarital agreement signed on or after October 1, 2007, the statute says that if the waiver causes a spouse to become eligible for public-assistance support at separation or divorce, a court may require the other spouse to provide support to the extent necessary to avoid that eligibility. I found no Florida appellate opinion applying that sentence, so its reach is untested.

Child support. Florida’s statute says a premarital agreement may not adversely affect a child’s right to support.

4. Will a Court Enforce a Waiver That Leaves One Spouse With Nothing?

Courts have, because fairness is measured on the day of signing and not on the day of the divorce. The statute names the three grounds for refusing enforcement. The challenger must prove the agreement was signed involuntarily, was the product of fraud, duress, coercion or overreaching, or was unconscionable when signed and the challenger had no fair disclosure, no written waiver of disclosure and no adequate knowledge of the other spouse’s finances.

The Florida Supreme Court applied the same reasoning to an agreement signed in 1986 in Hahamovitch. The husband was 46, the wife 28, and both had lawyers and accountants. After 22 years the agreement gave the wife about $1.9 million over seven years, and the Court enforced the release as written. In Baker the wife knew she would receive no alimony, saw the financial statement showing the husband’s assets, and testified that nobody pressured her. A statement that there will be no wedding without a prenup is not duress by itself, according to Doig.

What makes a prenup invalid in Florida covers the cases where a signature was set aside.

5. How Much Alimony Is a Prenup Waiving?

Florida cut the amounts and terms in 2023. For divorce petitions filed on or after July 1, 2023, the statute lists four forms of alimony, which are temporary, bridge-the-gap, rehabilitative and durational. Permanent alimony is not on the list. The court first decides that one spouse has an actual need and the other has the ability to pay, and the spouse asking carries the burden on both.

The amount of durational alimony is the lesser of the recipient’s reasonable need or 35 percent of the difference between the spouses’ net incomes. If one spouse nets $12,000 a month and the other nets $3,000, the difference is $9,000 and the ceiling is $3,150 a month. A marriage of 20 years carries a ceiling of 15 years of payments, and the length of the marriage runs from the wedding date to the filing date. The figures above are the statute’s ceilings and not a forecast of any award. The statute also lets a court consider either spouse’s adultery and its economic impact, which the infidelity clause page takes up.

A prenup replaces that formula with the spouses’ own, either zero or a number.

6. What Am I Giving Up If I Am Asked to Waive All Support?

People write, “Together 10 years but they want me to waive all rights to any support in the prenup.” Ten years of living together do not count toward the statute’s length-of-marriage categories, because the statute measures from the wedding date. A wife who waives alimony before the wedding gives up the formula in section 5 for however long the marriage lasts.

In Snedaker, the husband was president of U.S. Sprint and the wife agreed to $42,000 a year in support, a figure reached after she named $50,000 as fair and the parties counted her $8,000 in Social Security. The agreement scaled the payments to the length of the marriage and waived any further alimony. After a four-and-a-half-year marriage the trial court raised the support to $85,000 and added a $250,000 lump sum. The Fourth District reversed both, because the wife had waived the right to ask for more. Whichever number you accept is the number.

If you are the spouse being asked, four steps matter.

1. Get your own lawyer. Florida does not require counsel, and a review of the agreement you were handed is a flat fee from $750. The most direct evidence that a signature was voluntary is a lawyer of your own.
2. Ask for the other spouse’s finances in writing, with values, before you sign.
3. Ask for a number or a formula in place of the waiver. A fixed sum, a sum that rises with each year of marriage or a waiver that ends after a set number of years are all choices Florida courts have enforced.
4. Ask for time. An agreement handed over in the last week reads as pressure, and I tell clients to raise that early.

A spouse may decline to sign, and a marriage without a prenup runs on the statute’s formula. A prenup signed unwillingly can be attacked on the grounds in section 4.

What It Costs

A prenup drafted for one spouse is a flat fee from $2,450. A review of an agreement the other side drafted is a flat fee from $750. What each fee includes is on the prenup page, and the cost page explains what drives the number. The fees are honored for 90 days from October 6, 2026, and government costs are additional and passed through at cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The second marriage between two people in their sixties. Each has a pension and a house, and neither wants to pay the other. A mutual waiver with full disclosure is the situation Baker enforced.

The spouse who paid the other’s debts. A waiver of alimony does not repay premarital money. A separate clause on repayment is a property term.

For the death side of the same agreement, see how a prenup works at death, and for what the agreement reaches beyond alimony, whether a prenup protects future assets.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §61.079(2)(b), (4)(a)4 and (4)(b), (6), (7)(a) and (7)(b) (premarital agreements; support terms, child support, amendment, enforcement, public-assistance override). Fla. Stat. §61.08(1)(a), (2)(a), (5) to (8) and (11) (forms of alimony, need and ability, marriage length, durational limits, applicability to petitions filed on or after July 1, 2023).
• McNamara v. McNamara, 40 So. 3d 78 (Fla. 5th DCA 2010); Baker v. Baker, 622 So. 2d 541 (Fla. 5th DCA 1993); Snedaker v. Snedaker, 660 So. 2d 1070 (Fla. 4th DCA 1995); Hahamovitch v. Hahamovitch, 133 So. 3d 1008 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014), approved, 174 So. 3d 983 (Fla. 2015); Mackaravitz v. Mackaravitz, 710 So. 2d 57 (Fla. 4th DCA 1998); Cladis v. Cladis, 512 So. 2d 271 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987); Holland v. Holland, 406 So. 2d 496 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981); Doig v. Doig, 787 So. 2d 100 (Fla. 2d DCA 2001). Opinions read in full.
• Belcher v. Belcher, 271 So. 2d 7 (Fla. 1972); Lord v. Lord, 993 So. 2d 562 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008); Khan v. Khan, 79 So. 3d 99 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012); Appelbaum v. Appelbaum, 620 So. 2d 1293 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993) (temporary support and fees). Bates v. Bates (Fla. 4th DCA 2021) describes §61.079(7), effective October 1, 2007, as a codification of Casto v. Casto, 508 So. 2d 330 (Fla. 1987).
• Statutes and opinions retrieved 2026-10-07. No Florida appellate opinion applying §61.079(7)(b) to a prenup signed on or after October 1, 2007 was found as of 2026-10-06.

When an Alimony Waiver Meets a Judge Who Wants to Award Something

In my practice, the sentence that matters in an alimony waiver is the one that names the form of support, and I have read what happens when it does not.

A couple married on November 7, 1992, after signing an agreement in which each party “forever waives any right to claim or seek any form of alimony or spousal support from the other.” The wife had used her own premarital money to pay the husband’s debts. At the divorce in 1997 the trial court found the agreement did not provide for rehabilitative or permanent alimony. The court then awarded the wife lump-sum alimony anyway, with interest, on the ground that she had lost money in the marriage and the husband could pay. The Fourth District reversed in 1998, because no finding said the agreement was invalid for fraud, duress, unfairness or unreasonableness.

I have a few take-home points.

The first is the word “any.” A waiver of “any form” of alimony closed the lump-sum route that a sympathetic judge opened, and a narrower clause might not have.

The second is that the wife’s real loss was a debt she paid with her own money. The agreement had no clause to repay it, and alimony was the wrong tool for it. A clause on repayment of premarital funds would have given her something enforceable.

The third is the written-amendment sentence. The agreement allowed a change only in a writing signed by both, and the court held the trial judge to it.

Practice pointer. Name each form of support, waive modification in the same paragraph, and put anything the waiving spouse is owed in a separate property clause with a number.

Avoid a clause that says only “no alimony” for a spouse who is giving up real money, because the narrow wording invites the argument and the lopsided result invites a judge to look for a way around it.

An honest limit belongs here. Nothing in the clause reaches temporary support during a divorce, and no Florida appellate court has said what the public-assistance sentence in the statute requires. Whether a waiver is right for you depends on the two incomes and the length of marriage you expect, which is a judgment we make together.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case above is a published opinion in other parties’ matter, not a matter this firm handled, and it predicts nothing about yours.

Updated on October 7, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Each spouse should have independent counsel. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.